The present invention relates to dental tools, appliances, and the like, and more particularly to an oral evacuation device and method.
Oral evacuation devices or aspirators, such as those used in dentistry, oral surgery, and the like are generally well known. Some prior evacuation devices are hung from the mouth of the patient. These devices can interfere with the operating area of the mouth, and are typically considered uncomfortable.
Some aspirators, such as the device illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,310,308 to Oien are particularly designed to be used in conjunction with a dental dam, which is frequently used in various operating procedures to isolate a particular area of the patient's mouth on which a certain procedure is to be performed.
Such combination dam and aspirators typically have a relatively large size, and are designed to be used on the cheek side of the teeth, as opposed to the inside or tongue side of the mouth. The evacuation head is attached directly to a conventional suction tube, which is rather stiff, and has a relatively large diameter, such that the tube does not adapt very comfortably to the shape of the patient's mouth. Furthermore, such combination dam and evacuation devices are designed to be used only on the lower half of the patient's mouth, and are not effective in treating areas on the upper half of the patient's mouth. Furthermore, such aspirators typically do not include any type of retainer mechanism that will hold the aspirator in a comfortable position, so as to effectively remove saliva from the back of the patient's mouth throughout the entire operating procedure. An additional drawback associated with prior combination aspirators and dental dams is that the suction on the opposite sides of the dam is at the same general location in the patient's mouth. Hence, when an operating procedure is being performed on a forward portion of the patient's mouth, a large quantity of saliva can collect in the back of the patient's mouth before it rises to a level at which the lower aspirator will begin to function. Since this amount of saliva generally causes patient discomfort, the operating procedure must be interrupted periodically to manually evacuate under the dam. Manual evacuation of the patient's mouth requires the services of a dental assistant throughout the entire operating procedure, and such interruptions greatly increase the time required to complete the operation, which typically results in more cost, and additional patient discomfort.